The present invention relates to a carrier for holding pieces of yarn and the like ready for use in making latch hook rugs and the like by hand.
Attractive rugs, wall hangings, pillow cases and the like can be made by tying short pieces of yarn of uniform length to the threads of a coarsely woven mesh backing material, leaving the ends of all of the pieces of yarn evenly aligned with one another on one side of the backing material. The preferred type of backing material is commercially available, and is often sold in kits which provide all of the necessary materials for making a complete rug or other article. In such kits, a pattern for the rug is often printed on the backing material, and various colors of yarn are provided so that a handicraft hobbyist may complete the kit by tying lengths of yarn to the mesh of the backing material. By following the pattern printed on the mesh the hobbyist can easily produce an intricate design in the finished article.
One such type of craft article is called a latch hook rug, because individual precut pieces of yarn are tied to the mesh backing material in a cowhitch or similar knot which may be most easily made with the use of a latch hook. Yarn is often provided in precut form in such kits, saving the hobbyist the time otherwise necessary to cut yarn into many individual pieces of uniform length. Such yarn, when packaged in precut form, is commonly wrapped in a bundle, with all of the yarns parallel to one another and their ends evenly aligned. Individual yarns are removed from the package when needed for tying into the mesh backing material. Although this type of package for the yarn is initially sufficient, it has several weaknesses. As pieces of precut yarn are removed, the yarn remaining in the package becomes looser and looser until the package no longer holds the yarn securely. As a result, the precut pieces of yarn may easily be spilled, making it difficult to work on a handicraft article of this sort in places such as buses, commuter trains, and the like, because of the likelihood of scattering the precut pieces of yarn.
In making latch hook rugs, each precut piece of yarn must be bent double before it is tied using the latch hook. Precut yarn is commonly packaged straight, requiring the hobbyist to bend each piece of yarn individually as he makes his handmade article. Additionally, such precut yarn is usually packaged in packets of standard sizes, which often provide too much of a particular color of yarn for a particular rug pattern, leading to wasted yarn.
While to some extent it is possible to gain an idea of the eventual appearance of a handmade article by observation of the pattern printed on a mesh backing in a kit, or from photographs of exemplary finished articles, the colors printed on the mesh material or seen in photographs rarely are exactly the colors of the yarn actually provided in a kit. As a result, it is often difficult to form a good idea of the eventual appearance of a latch hook rug or similar article by observing the contents of a kit.
What is needed, therefore, is a carrier for precut pieces of yarn which holds all of the pieces of yarn tightly enough to prevent loss but loosely enough for easy removal and without progressive loosening as additional pieces of yarn are removed. It is also desirable to provide in such a carrier a way of previewing the final appearance of the latch hook rug or similar article which may be made from a kit, while holding the yarn for such a kit so that it is already bent in a "U" shape.